Languages

Miscellaneous

This book analyses legal campaigns and cases in a number of Asian, Middle Eastern and North African countries, and describes a strategy for challenging these laws – delegation to the wife of the right to pronounce divorce on the behalf of her husband on their marriage – to equalise the right to divorce.

The increased labeling of diverse immigrant communities of Muslim background in Europe as having a common culture since they share a common religion is appearing as a dominant trend. Religion is becoming equated with “culture”.

The Dossiers explore and synthesize a broad range of feelings, interpretations and strategies of women on issues of feminism, nationalism, internationalism, and religion. Our dossiers had announced the first two Asian lesbian conferences; we are now beginning to recieve articles about the situation of lesbians in Muslim countries and communities which we will be publishing in the future issues.

Highlighting the debate on women's human rights in Muslim countries and communities, this dossier presents the testimony on violations of women in Algeria which opened the Women's International Tribunal at the NGO forum-Beijing Conference on women; it is followed by a testimony on the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) amongst the Bohra Muslims in India. Both contributions show that certain local practices are being extended to other geographical areas.

The aim of
this paper is to explore some contradictory implications of nationalist projects
in post-colonial societies. It examines the extent to which elements of national
identity and cultural difference are articulated as forms of control over women
and which infringe upon their rights as enfranchised
citizens.

Despite the extensive literature on nationalism, there are
relatively few systematic attempts to analyse women's integration into
nationalist projects. The little there is conveys seemingly contradictory
messages.

Few developments in the post-Cold
War era have captured public attention, stirred primal fears, stoked the fires
of racism, and stymied critical thinking quite so thoroughly as the rise of
fundamentalism. Although it is a force to be reckoned with in virtually every
area of public endeavour, the rise of fundamentalism presents a very specific,
and somewhat unique, challenge to the emerging field of reproductive health and
rights.

One of the most frequent questions I am
faced with in the process of my dialogue with men regarding the personal laws and
women’s rights is whether or not we, women - think Mehr is a provision which
is an unjust imposition on men. They further ask whether or not we, women -
who demand equality for ourselves be against this provision?

We, the women participating in the
Arab Court of Women, held in Beirut, June 28-30, 1995, as testifiers and
audience to those testimonies; we, who had the opportunity to take part in this
great event, jointly assume the responsibility of what we heard of words of
truth which broke the ring of silence that had long stifled our voices and
sufferings of women.